The World Cup Spilleth Over: As the Soccer Games End, Political Ones Begin

The World Cup Spilleth
Over: As the Soccer Games End, Political
Ones Begin

By
Danny Schechter

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New
York, New York: The World Cup has spilleth over. With the FIFA spectacle about to pack up its
goodies--most of their lucre has already been wired out of Brazil--it's time for
hype for the next global spectacle, as the "host" country now tries to cope
with its financial losses, intensified social conflicts and humiliating defeat
at the hands of the Germans after earlier losing their star player to a nasty
collision on the field, and their valiant
Captain to a penalty.

On
s symbolic level, Brazil's bashing at the feet of Germany using bum rush
tactics compared to the Nazi "Blitzgrieg"
brought smiles to Old Europe, and pain to a nation struggling with massive
poverty and inequality.

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In
a way, it underscored the dependence and anger that so many Brazilians felt,
even as the issues they have raising and marching to call attention to, have all been but ignored by the sportscasters who
know game scores but not the scores of life--the great gaps that events like the
World Cup paper over.

We
saw this movie before, just 4 years ago, in South Africa where warnings of
corrupt practices and unreasonable demands by FIFA---to have companies they
pick build unwanted and unneeded stadiums, and control all TV rights, among other
"requirements"" insuring they controlled the events and made the most
money--were lost in well orchestrated patriotic fervor to bring the games to
Africa for the first time.

South
Africans were persuaded after years of struggling for freedom that they had
finally arrived in the big time

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In
the end, FIFA made more money off the
games in South Africa than in any earlier World Cup. There were plenty of photo
ops and mutual congratulations, but, afterwards, the county was left with a
large debt and white elephant stadiums, like the one in Cape Town which some critics
want to turn into a low income housing project in a "Mother City" known for its
shacks and packed slum-like townships

At
the time, South African media turned down a powerful documentary forecasting
these problems. To the ANC, the ruling party, the FIFA party was the one to
embrace even as fans brought their own invention, to the games---wailing horns
that expressed both joy and disquiet. Called the vuvuzela/vuːvuːˈzɛlə/, it
produces a traditional loud monotone note that was barely tolerated by FIFA
officialdom because it was seen as disruptive, interfering with their marketing and all the selling that was
going on.

News Dissector Danny Schechter is blogger in chief at Mediachannel.Org He is the author of PLUNDER: Investigating Our Economic Calamity (Cosimo Books) available at Amazon.com.
See Newsdisssector.org/store.htm.